Thanks Louis.
On 23/07/2011, at 4:50 AM, Louis Schultz wrote:
Alastair, For some reason I can't post to the developer list
although I receive emails from it.
If you send from the wrong (unregistered) email account it shuts you
out, possible cause?
Anyway, here are a few math resources that might help. There are
loads more out there and they all explain things slightly
differently so if you get hung up somewhere in an explanation, just
search google for whatever it is and you will find someone else with
an approach that might make a little more sense.
http://paulbourke.net/geometry/
Yes I've used in the past, I like.
http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=Static&d1=tutorials&d2=geometry1
http://www.proxyarch.com/search/lab1/lab1.html
http://www.proxyarch.com/search/lab2/lab2.html
This has some handy background information and might be good to skim
before looking at the other two.
http://www.3DSoftware.com/Math/Ref/
This is sort of far from your question although very much in the
same vein. In the world of computer aided architectural design, a
lot of people are working on designs that are responsive to solar
angles in various ways.
Funnily enough I studied architect for a few years starting back in
1986/7. Early AutoCad was all we had and I found it slightly
depressing! Solar angles are taken so much more seriously today than
back then, somewhat ironic. Architects have a rediscovered love for
the Sun (or so they claim).
Depending on how much of the sort of thing you are currently working
on you want to do, you may find something useful if you investigate.
The Grasshopper plugin to the Rhino 3D modeler works very similarly
to QC. Rhino is fairly inexpensive for what it is, really a good
deal if you can buy it at the academic price, and Grasshopper is a
lot of fun.
Using Rhino OS X Beta. No Grasshopper on OS X as yet :-/
These are probably not the best examples, just the ones I could find
quickly that sort of demonstrate what I mean.
http://www.grasshopper3d.com/
http://www.tedngai.net/experiments/incident-solar-current-time.html
http://designreform.net/2011/01/rhino-grasshopper-external-solar-
shade/
Good luck,
Louis
On Jul 22, 2011, at 1:03 AM, Alastair Leith wrote:
Beautiful Achim!
Thanks so much for giving it your attention. I will need to study
your JS patch to learn from the equations, I'm very grateful. Not
too late, this is on my must do 3D sim of solar thermal on my list.
Will perhaps make a little free application to promote the solar
thermal here down under — where we have lots of high strength
Sunlight but alas many want to burn coal for another 100 years, or
long enough to put their kids through an expensive private school
anyhow.
If anybody has a good book or web reference to learning about 3D
maths for comp sci applications (QC mainly) please recommend.
I started reading about Euler angles and Matrix transformations and
such-like, because I often bump into a lack of basic Comp Sci Maths
ability in QC when I want to fold or transform objects. Figured the
sooner I learn Matrix Transforms the better. The use of trig in
those transform matrixes using sin-theata & cos-theata is pretty
similar to what I had worked out myself on paper using trig anyhow
so just a matter of learning the formalities, I guess. It's all the
quadrant signing madness that confuses me mostly!
I realised next day I had the sun on the wrong side of the tower!
thanks for that correction too :-)
Looks really cool even without God Rays from mirrors to tower. Do
you know what equations they use to plot those sunflower-seed-
arrangement type of mirror layouts? Some seem to be using Fibonacci
or log spirals. Anyhow thanks again.
Maybe it's just equal spacing on concentric ellipses:
On 22/07/2011, at 3:48 AM, Achim Breidenbach wrote:
Hello Alastair,
I hope I am not too late with my solution, but I was on vacation
and didn't have access to the internet.
I don't have any 3rd party plugin installed, so I wasn't really
able to see your equations. Therefor I had to create the equations
from scratch and I used java script for it. Finding those angles
for a sun power plant was always on my "try this sometimes" list
and I had really fun implementing it.
So find attached my solution, I hope you can find some
similarities to yours.
My changes:
- removed a lot of your code, because of the missing plugins.
- added the iterator to run 100 mirrors, just for fun
- changed the sun path to walk on the opposite way in the sky,
just to see if this works also.
If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask!
best,
Achim
<solar tower one reflector only (Achim).qtz>
On 18.07.2011, at 15:16, Alastair Leith wrote:
Hi List
This is more of a maths question than QC per se but I'm out of my
depth and need remedial help from the 3D mathamagians on this
list. And QC may offer a shortcut to solution I'm not aware of.
I have QC animating the Angle of Incidence (AoI) of the Sun and
the Angle of Reflection (AoR) to the tower collector is fixed as
determined by the reflectors position on the XY plane (see ill
1). Presumably the unit vector perpendicular to the mirror is
equidistant the ?mean of the AoI and AoR unit vectors. If that is
so I should be able to add the AoI and AoR unit vectors and
divide by two to get the mean.
So that means determining the X, Y & Z components of the vectors,
adding components, halving XYZ component results then using the
X,Y,Z components to calculate the rotational coefficients on a
the mirror object (a Cube renderer object) using trig, I believe.
That's where I'm having trouble my results don't look correct.
Are there any QC shortcuts to this kind of problem? When I have
the general solution for 1 mirror I will iterate for an array of
(X, Y, 0) reflector positions.
Comp attached, uses Kineme OpenGL plugin (free at Kineme.net) to
draw the lines.
<STTA_3.jpg>
<STTA_2.jpg>
Solar Tower QC Composition
Also cross posted on MathHelpForum if you care to read further
there.
Thanks in advance.
Alastair
Alastair I Leith
Useful Design
03 9480 5506
0432 889 831
30 Birch St
West Preston
VIC 3072 Au
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